Sensationalism

Mixed cultural signals often appear via media outlets, especially advertisements appealing to a targeted audience. Stereotyped races are most often applied by the media to target a specific issue in the narrowest span of time, despite the equally narrow perspectives of a race so commonly implied.

The media’s underlining motive for the stereotype is, as Cofer explained, “easy to promote.” Unfortunately, the exacerbating use of such stereotypes exploit the image of a race, leading to racism, prejudice, and difficulty for one to live in a just society. The propagation of the stereotype significantly affects a race’s social status, even subconsciously as Cofer experienced when a woman mistook her for a boat-restaurant’s waitress. Not interpretation, but the manipulation of a race and stereotypes as a mode of promotion for the media simply stresses it to the point of dilapidation of an individual, unique race. This manipulation of a race’s image by advertisement outlets promotes its use in other contexts, thus expanding the false generalizations and further inciting racism.

The media operates on the “hottest” story to feed its ratings-hungry producers; therefore, it exclusively focuses on only controversial facets of ethnic features. Any aspect of something associated with a race shares the same adjectives, the same innuendo, and the same vocabulary; Cofer draws the conclusion that a Hispanic woman is labeled as “sizzling” as the food she eats.

The media employs the blatant stereotype to propound its intention: the promotion of a product irrespective of an ethnicity. While most people understand the connection between stereotypes, it often misrepresents the affected race, sometimes to a critical, nay abhorrent degree. The media’s perpetuation of the stereotype has only stimulated the use of racial prejudice and bigotry in a credulous society: one ostensibly tolerant and ethnically amalgamated. Unto every human, a stereotype.